


plain white room

by Kaesa



Series: Kaesa's Whumptober 2019 fics [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, Kidnapping, M/M, Post-Canon, Rescue, Trauma Recovery, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 03:58:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21112292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesa/pseuds/Kaesa
Summary: Heaven has been holding Aziraphale prisoner for a long time, but eventually, Crowley finds him.





	plain white room

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Whumptober 2019, for the prompts "isolation" and "stay with me."

There were no nights in Heaven, and no darkness. No rest for the eyes.

It must not have bothered the angels who were here all the time -- it certainly hadn't bothered Aziraphale Before -- but now it was starting to. He didn't know how long he'd been held here, without visitors, without food, without _anything _to distract him. The white cell had a chair (also white), and one of the smaller walls was a window, looking out onto all the landmarks of the Earth that had been deemed important enough.

Aziraphale could think of a few he'd add. They weren't monumental, or historical, particularly, they were just... nice. Heavenly, in the human sense. The bench where he and Crowley met at St. James's Park. Several restaurants, from the delightful hole-in-the-wall places Crowley sometimes found for him all the way up to the Ritz. His shop. Crowley's horrible flat, even -- or at least the bed in it, which was not horrible in the least.

The cell did not have a bed. It wasn't meant to be cruel on Heaven's part, Aziraphale knew, and it wasn't as though he even slept, but he wanted somewhere to just lie down and have a good sulk.

Besides, he'd broken the chair throwing it at the window.

So now his eyes hurt, and he had a headache, and also he was _hungry,_ and had been so for a long time, and he was sitting on the cold, hard floor, and he hadn't moved much because there wasn't much point to it.

For the first little while, they'd at least sent angels in to ask him questions -- how had he and Crowley managed to make themselves immune to hellfire and holy water, mostly, but also questions about what Crowley had done to him to make him betray Heaven. They'd stopped in, oh, about a hundred times. Aziraphale had lost count. He'd never said anything useful to them, only quietly asked to be released. He thought probably he'd been here without interrogators for longer than he'd had them.

To stay sane, he'd started by dredging up all the poetry he could think of, and all the novels, and anything else printed that he could recall. But he'd run out of those things, eventually, having worked his way around to the signs in the windows of the neighboring stores in Soho, and started doing squares in his head. Aziraphale had no great talent for maths, but he'd got up to 2,375, the square of which was 5,640,625 (unless it was 5,616,875, but he was pretty sure it wasn't) so he must have been here for a while. He was thinking about quitting when he reached three thousand, and maybe starting all over again. Or maybe not. Maybe he'd think of something else to do.

In between squares, he'd had conversations with Crowley in his head; sometimes they were reminiscences of past discussions they'd had, and sometimes they were things he'd never got to say to Crowley, but the longer he stayed here, the more vivid they all became. So when the door cracked open a tiny bit, and he heard Crowley whisper "Aziraphale?" he assumed he was imagining it.

_Yes, my dear?_ he'd say. And Crowley would say...

"Aziraphale? You'd better bloody well be in here, this place gives me the __creeps. __If my information's wrong I'm going to strangle the bastard I got it from."

That. Was not the next line of any script in Aziraphale's head. "Crowley?" he asked. But he didn't dare hope.

"Who else would I be, the janitor?" He sounded so very irritated that Aziraphale's heart leapt with joy because of _course _it was Crowley.

Aziraphale sprang up from the floor, but he hadn't stood in quite a while, but it was fine because when he staggered forward, somebody caught him, and it was --

It _was _Crowley, but...

"My dear, what _are _you wearing?" Aziraphale asked. He wore a _suit,_ a proper one, and it was beige with gold accents__, __and -- and his eyes --

"They're contacts, don't worry," said Crowley, though it didn't make seeing him with blue eyes any less of a shock. "Itchy things. I hate them. Did they hurt you? Can you walk?"

"I -- I think so," said Aziraphale, and steadied himself. "They didn't hurt me, they just... left me here. But my dear, how did you --"

"Shh, I'll explain when we get out of here," said Crowley. "I've been hanging around here for a _year _trying to get at you, and I finally managed to introduce team-building exercises to Gabriel, so everybody's off doing trust falls or something, but we don't have long."

"Oh, Crowley." He put a hand on Crowley's cheek. "I love you, you know. So very, very much."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty fond of you too," said Crowley. He leaned forward and kissed Aziraphale briefly, and when he pulled away he blinked back tears. "Don't love these contacts, though, they sting." He wiped his face. "Anyway, come on! Let's get the heaven out of -- oh, that doesn't really work, does it?"

Aziraphale took his hand firmly. "Let's go home?" he suggested.

Crowley gave him a smile so loving it made him a bit dizzy. "Yeah. That."

* * *

Things were strained, afterward. Aziraphale was restless but the world was so loud and full of color and nuance. He would practically bolt out of the shop early mornings to do something -- not because it had to be done just then but because he felt the desperate need to be _out _and a lot of things weren't open at 3 am when he had these sudden thoughts and could do nothing but lie awake and listen to Crowley breathe.

By eight or nine in the morning he'd be tired, though, tired from the world being just so very much _itself,_ and he'd hurry back to the bookshop to find Crowley a nervous wreck. "Angel, there you are," he'd say, sounding wrung out and forcing his face into a smile that didn't convince Aziraphale at all.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," he would say. "I meant to leave a note." And he really did mean to.

It happened three or four times a week for a while, these urgent early-morning trips to the bakery or the grocery store or sometimes to a museum, where Aziraphale would spend all of an hour wandering cheerfully, almost alone but for staff and bleary-eyed see-all-of-London-in-two-days tourists, before having to retreat to the shop.

And always, Crowley would greet him with too much cheer, too much forced casualness, and a cup of cocoa. He'd try to talk Aziraphale into settling in on the couch to read, then sprawl with his head or his legs in Aziraphale's lap, or wind around him like a snake, or wind around him _as _a snake. He'd suggest marathoning television programs Aziraphale had never heard of -- which was most of them, admittedly. He'd steer Aziraphale gently back to the bedroom with soft kisses and wandering hands, or grab him and push him up against the poetry shelves and make him breathless with pleasure.

It wasn't as though Aziraphale didn't enjoy most of these activities (except, more often than not, for the television marathons) but the urgency and worry he could see behind Crowley's eyes made him guilty.

One day, rather proud of himself for managing two whole hours in a particularly tourist-infested museum, he headed back to the shop only to almost run into Crowley hurrying out of it. "Where have you _been?_" Crowley asked.

"At the British Museum. They had that exhibit on the building of Hadrian's wall, and I thought I might... you know, see if there was anything of anybody we knew," he said. He smiled hopefully. It had been indoors, and it had been stark white in places, but there had been people there, so it was less stark and confining than Heaven, but he was no longer used to so much going on in one space.

Time was he could spend the whole day there, in that strange mixture of things he'd seen when they were new, now ancient, and things he'd never even imagined were happening in another part of the world. But now he was very proud of his hard-won two hours.

Crowley did not smile back. He just looked stricken. "Right. Yeah. Good," he said. "Sorry, I'm -- I'm just being weird. Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"See anybody we knew?" Crowley asked.

"Oh! Don't think so," said Aziraphale. "Was hoping to see something of that engineer fellow who was always so much fun, what was his name..."

"Divixtus?" Crowley asked.

"Yes! Yes, I think so," said Aziraphale. "Do you know, I think he would've liked the exhibit?" he said.

"That's great," said Crowley, in a tone that suggested it was not, in fact, great. "Look. Can we go inside?"

"Of course, Crowley," said Aziraphale, feeling terribly guilty again. He followed Crowley into the shop, and into the back room. "I know, I ought to leave a note, I just --"

"No, it's me, I'm just --" Crowley collapsed onto the couch. "You were gone for _three years,_ Aziraphale. You just vanished and it took me _three years _to get you back and I was so scared for most of that time that they'd killed you. And every time you're not here -- I don't even think a note would help, I'm just -- I'm like this when you go to the _shop,_ Aziraphale, it's not _your _fault I'm fucking broken. You just got back and you were _fine,_ and I don't know why I'm n--"

"I'm not fine, Crowley," said Aziraphale, sitting down next to him.

"But you are, you're doing things and you're -- frankly you're getting out and about more than you used to before they took you, it's --" Aziraphale watched him come to the realization. "Oh. Oh, _Aziraphale._"

"I don't know what to do, Crowley," he said, feeling like an idiot. He wrung his hands. "I can't -- I can't stay here for too long, but outside is -- there's -- there's too much, I'm not used to it anymore -- but inside is -- is... well. The books help a little bit, until I catch myself trying to memorize them in case something happens again and I'm without them, and -- and it's all..." He stared at his knees. "So I try to go outside and do something and then I come back and I'm exhausted but I feel trapped and here you are, poor _sweet _dear, terrified I've been kidnapped by the Host of Heaven yet again, but no, I have cleverly kidnapped myself and _I don't know where to put me._"

He felt Crowley put an arm around him and gently pull him into an embrace. "Oh, angel, I didn't know. I should've thought of that."

"No, it's all right," said Aziraphale, "I didn't say anything." He laughed humorlessly. "Didn't want to worry you."

Crowley kissed him on the forehead, and then leaned against him. They stayed there for a while, taking comfort in each other's warmth and closeness, not speaking, just... existing.

Eventually, Crowley said, "Is the car inside or outside?"

"Sorry?" Aziraphale asked.

"The Bentley," said Crowley. "Is it -- is it too enclosed, like being inside, or is it too much going on, like being outside?"

Aziraphale thought about it for a while. "You know," he said, "I don't think it's really either, inherently. Although when you almost hid seven pedestrians it's definitely too much going on."

Crowley considered this for a few moments. "Want to go for a drive, angel? I'll try to obey the speed limit until we get out of the city."

Aziraphale smiled. "I think I'd like that, actually."


End file.
